Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 GDDR4 & HD 4830

Gaming on a budget isn’t as difficult as it once was, thanks to superb offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA that go for a modest price. But, what about the sub-$100 crowd? We’ll find that out here, at least from the ATI side of things, with Sapphire’s HD 4670 GDDR4 and HD 4830. Both feature great efficiency, and believe it or not, great overclocking as well.

Left 4 Dead

Not too many game publishers can brag about having such a great track record like Valve can. None of their major game releases have ever been released to anything but praise, which goes to show that not rushing to release a game to please investors can make a huge difference. Take Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, for example.

Left 4 Dead is one game I didn’t take seriously up until its launch. After playing it though, my opinions changed drastically, and even as I type this, I feel like saving the document and going to play. But, I’m also scared of Zombies, so continue writing I shall. Like Dead Space, this game is a survival shooter, but unlike that game, this title focuses completely on co-op. For the most part, the game is dulled in single player, but team up with three of your friends and let the laughs and excitement begin.

The portion of the level we use for testing is contained within the No Mercy campaign. The ultimate goal in the entire campaign is to make it to the top of a hospital in order to be picked up and brought off to safety. Our run through takes place in the final part of the the campaign, which leads up towards the roof tops. If one thing can be said about this title, it’s that causing a Boomer to explode (as seen in the above screenshot) proves to be one of the most satisfying things to do in any game I’ve played in a while.

Valve’s releasing of games that both look great and run well on most machines is nothing new, with Left 4 Dead being the latest in their collection to be able to brag about such a thing. Though not ideal, even the HD 4670 could be considered playable at 2560×1600 with 4xAA. That’s impressive. It’s a $60 graphics card!

Graphics Card

Best Playable

Avg. FPS

NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB x 2

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

117.701 FPS

Palit HD 4870 X2 2GB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

117.039 FPS

NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB x 2

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

109.491 FPS

Zotac GTX 295 1792MB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

102.422 FPS

Zotac GTX 285 1GB AMP!

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

73.075 FPS

NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

72.072 FPS

Palit GTX 280 1GB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

66.775 FPS

Diamond HD 4870 1GB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

66.294 FPS

XFX GTX 260/216 896MB

2560×1600, Max Detail, 8xMSAA

56.608 FPS

Sapphire HD 4830 512MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xMSAA

48.612 FPS

Sapphire HD 4670 512MB

2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA

39.770 FPS

Although 4xAA was mostly playable, I felt that the game ran much smoother with anti-aliasing disabled, and I’m willing to bet most people would agree. This is a fast-paced game, so any lag at all can ruin some of your fun. Disabling AA gave us another 11 FPS to almost hit 40 FPS, which is quite good. It goes without saying that almost no one will attempt this resolution on this GPU though, except us, so what we can basically surmise is that this card will run the game fine for anyone.